


Shackles and Bows

by Sholio



Series: The Epic Post-Series Road Trip of DOOM [7]
Category: Iron Fist (TV)
Genre: Banter, Gen, Handcuffed Together, Sibling Bonding, Whumptober
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-09
Updated: 2019-10-09
Packaged: 2020-12-02 02:16:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,673
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20967881
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sholio/pseuds/Sholio
Summary: "I don't want to go home," Ward said, exasperated. "I just want to not be in a swamp, with a broken wrist, handcuffed to you."





	Shackles and Bows

**Author's Note:**

  * For [scioscribe](https://archiveofourown.org/users/scioscribe/gifts).

> For the Whumptober prompt "shackled." Title is from The Cars' "Magic" for no particular reason except that I kept getting earwormed with that lyric every time I looked at the word on the prompt list, and eventually went with it.

"Just ... hang on, I've almost got it ... I think ..."

"No you don't," Ward said between chattering teeth. "No you don't, because there is _no way_ those monks taught you to pick locks. Did they even _have_ locks?"

"I've seen it on TV," Danny mumbled distractedly.

"-- oh _great,_ that improves my confidence immeasurably, but anyway, even if you do know lock-fu, there's no way you can pick a lock one-handed. In the dark. In the rain. With a _rusty nail."_

He had more to say, plenty more, but just then there was a small screech of metal on metal, and a muttered, "Oops," from Danny, and then no more jerking and tugging at the cuff joining them together.

"Dropped your nail, huh?" Ward said with all the sarcasm he could muster, which by this point was a lot. He would have smacked Danny across the head if he'd been able to use his other arm. Unfortunately he had just one functional arm at this point, and it was the one that was shackled to Danny.

"Well, it was worth a try, okay?" Danny straightened up. Ward could barely see him; his eyes had adjusted to the darkness underneath the trees to an extent he hadn't thought possible, but still, it was the middle of the night and they were far from anywhere, and it was _astonishingly_ dark out here. Also very wet. 

"I can't believe this is my life now. I'm handcuffed to you in a swamp. With a broken arm," he added, giving his other shoulder a twitch, which he then regretted; it was really more the wrist, and it might just be a bad sprain, but he felt that he'd earned a bit of complaining at this point. "In the rain."

"Actually," Danny said, looking up -- Ward was mainly aware of this by a shifting in position and the movement of the slightly paler-than-the-darkness blur that was his main way of locating Danny aside from being handcuffed to him. "I don't think it's raining as much right now. Hardly at all, even. I'd say that's a pretty good sign, don't you?"

"Danny."

"What?"

"Shut up."

There was the very briefest of silences before the cuff tugged at Ward's good wrist, and Danny said, "How are you doing? How's your wrist? I wish we had something to splint it with. And you're shivering, I can feel it."

"Being angry at you is keeping me warm." Anyway, Danny was shivering too; it was impossible to hide it since they were connected by rusty iron cuffs and four inches of chain. So pot, kettle.

"Look," Danny said, his good temper finally starting to fray, "it's not entirely my fault, you know."

"It's your fault I'm _here,"_ Ward said, which he knew was unfair even as he said it, but he'd never claimed to be a nice person and there were extenuating circumstances.

Danny was quiet for a moment, and then he said, "When we get out of this you can go home. It's okay. I don't mind."

It was very clear from his tone of voice that he actually did mind but was trying very hard to put on a brave face about it, and if there had been anything handy to smack his head into other than moss-covered trees, Ward would have done it.

"I don't want to go home," he said, exasperated. "I just want to not be in a swamp, with a broken wrist, handcuffed to you."

Danny gave a soft little laugh, and Ward felt Danny's position shift, and then Danny's free arm went around him. It was partly support getting to his feet, and partly a hug, and he would have minded a lot more if he wasn't freezing. Danny felt like a furnace, comparatively speaking. 

"So let's get out of the swamp," Danny said. "That part, at least, we can do something about."

"Yeah, sure, let's do that." 

When Danny let go, Ward swayed a bit but got his balance. Which was good, because being handcuffed to someone by opposite wrists made it really awkward for them to give you a supportive arm without ending up face-to-face, which made it next to impossible to walk anywhere.

"We're going to fall into quicksand and die, you know," Ward remarked as they started forward, very cautiously, Danny feeling their way forward with a stick he'd snagged from a tree some ways back.

"No we won't," Danny said cheerfully. "There's no quicksand in places like this. Anyway, quicksand doesn't actually swallow people."

"First of all, I don't want to know how you know that, and second, you're about to tell me there's something worse, aren't you."

There was a brief silence. "No?" Danny said.

"Danny."

".... well, there are probably mud holes, but --"

"Oh good, I can tell this explanation is going to help a lot."

"... I think I can avoid them with this stick."

"You think."

"Trust me, Ward, I grew up running around in swamps with Davos and I only fell in mud holes a couple of times, and I managed to get out both times."

"You ... _managed_ to get out."

"Well, it's difficult to climb out because of all the ... mud." Danny seemed to realize that this wasn't helping. "Right. Look. We just need to stay to high ground and we'll be fine."

This of course was a cue for the ground to start trending downwards, and Danny apparently realized that shutting up was the better part of discretion at the moment. Ward also was pretty sure that while they had been sitting on the ground, some of the local insect life had decided to burrow under his shirt.

"Don't worry about snakes, either," Danny said after a few minutes of gloomy slogging. "The stick will flush them before they have a chance to bite."

"I wasn't worried about snakes until _you said that."_

But Danny was right, it wasn't currently raining, and no snakes had bitten him yet (unlike the approximately 400 billion mosquitoes). Keeping that in mind, he managed to look on the bright side for all of five minutes until Danny actually did fall into a mud hole, stick and all, and Ward had to pull him out by the shackled wrist.

They lay in a muddy heap on the ground, panting, and finally Danny gasped out, "Thanks."

"You can thank me," Ward said, his chest heaving as he gasped for air with Danny lying across his diaphragm, "by getting me _out_ of this SWAMP."

"I think we're almost out," Danny said, blatantly lying.

And Ward found himself actually laughing, mainly at the sheer absurdity of the situation, and possibly also -- he couldn't rule this out -- because the hypothermia had reached the giggling stage. Having Danny on top of him was sort of helping with the freezing-cold part, at least.

"Are you, er ... hysterical?" Danny asked, sounding anxious. 

"I don't think so," Ward said, getting his breath back. "But I also think the fact that I'm handcuffed to you is the only thing keeping me from pushing you into the next mud hole we find. By the way, I'm losing the feeling in my one remaining sort-of-functional arm."

"Oh, uh, sorry." Danny pushed up, yanked on his shackled wrist, apologized for it, bumped Ward's broken arm, apologized for that a number of times, and finally got him back on his feet.

Fortunately, about ten minutes after that they found a road, and a few minutes later they were in the back of a truck hauling junked electronics. It wasn't the most comfortable ride, especially over a rutted road with a broken wrist, but compared to falling into mud holes in the dark, it was a definite improvement. The truck driver had even given them a ratty old coat, which Danny draped over Ward and then started doing some kind of meditation thing to warm himself up, sitting beside Ward with one hand stretched out to try to ease the strain on both their wrists. Ward closed his eyes and tried not to focus on any of his many varieties of discomfort and just drowse.

"You can go back to the States if you want," Danny said, and Ward opened his eyes. "You know that, right? I'm okay with it."

"Can we talk about this later, when we're not both covered in mud and bug bites?" Ward said, and Danny laughed. "By the way, have you thought about what happens when either of us has to go to the bathroom?"

"I'm hoping we'll find a hacksaw first, and otherwise trying not to think about it. And," Danny added, shifting uncomfortably, "thanks, Ward; now I'm thinking about it."

"Well, don't. Meditate or whatever you were doing."

Danny smiled slightly, flaking mud off his face, and closed his eyes.

"You know what the crazy thing is?" Ward said, a mile or two later, and now it was Danny's turn to open his eyes. "Even with the mud and the bugs and the handcuffs and the arm and _everything,_ this is still kind of an improvement on my life before I met you. Re-met you. Whatever."

Danny promptly got _that look,_ and leaned on his shoulder. Ward kicked his ankle. Hard. "Stop it. I'm just saying, yeah, I might nope out on this at some point. But I'm not there yet."

A few miles farther on, it started raining again, but at least the truck's canopy kept most of it off, and Danny seemed to have fallen asleep on Ward's shoulder. Plus, the truck's engine was blasting at least _some_ heat into the back, so he was warming up a little bit. Maybe he _was_ actually picking up a little of Danny's ability to look on the bright side of things, after all.

.... And a few miles farther, the _truck_ drove into a mud hole, nose first, because apparently this road had a tendency to wash out in rains. But at least the scrap-iron truck driver who stopped by and pulled them out a couple of hours later had a hacksaw.


End file.
